Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
Drawing on Bill's last note and excluding France - which I know little about - where do we start on the "Home Front"?

In the UK, particularly drawing upon the Northern Ireland experience, counter-terrorism has focussed on pursuing the plotters, or violent extremists; other strands in the national CT strategy called Op Contest: Prepare, Prevent and Protect have had less immediate impact.

Containing violence by law enforcement and intelligence gathering - which eventually we got right in Northern Ireland - enabled political compromise via lengthy negoitations. Successful AQ / extremist attacks if kept to the minimum have been likened to being short and painful, not war.

Oddly the Prevent strand - which effectively seeks mobilisation against violent extremists - has yet to get far beyond rhetoric and funding the "usual suspects".

Incidentally a fifth 'P' is added by some; not to Provoke. I am sure the Muslim communities are the normal, primary consideration; let us not overlook the majority non-Muslim population.

A small start.

davidbfpo
I would suggest that we consider that any given subset of society has ways within which it deals with its own(per se) to directly approach Terrorism's roots with a solution in search of a problem might be a big tendency we must over come before really getting into the meat of the prevention.

In relation to the P I would posit in order to believe that one is proactively seeking to avoid provocation then one must have already decided that that provacation does indeed exist. This would in some ways seem like giving up the war before the battle is even begun.